The Pentagon: A History (13 page)

Indeed, Roosevelt was so worked up that he told Smith he was considering vetoing the entire $8 billion defense appropriation bill, an act that would throw the mobilization of the Army and Navy into disarray. That would not be advisable, the ever-rational budget director replied. Smith suggested there might be other ways to change the War Department building. The president directed Smith to work out some alternatives and report back.

A mere formality

The mood was euphoric as the principals planning the new War Department building gathered in room 2002d at the Construction Division headquarters at 2
P.M.
on Tuesday, August 19. Somervell waved a copy of a $29.5 million construction authorization issued that day by the War Department for a 5.2-million square foot building on the Arlington Farm site. All that was required now was the president’s signature on the defense bill, a mere formality, in Somervell’s view.

Groves and Renshaw were there, as was Lieutenant Colonel Pat Casey, chief of the design section, and a handful of other key Construction Division officers. Bergstrom represented the architects, while McShain and his superintendent, Hauck, were present on behalf of the contractors. Somervell opened the meeting. The plans would be presented to the president tomorrow, he announced. With that in mind, Somervell wanted everything ready to go as soon as approval was secured.

Excavation and grading plans were ready, Somervell was told, but plans for the footings were still in the works. There were ample supplies of slate roofing material and asphalt tile, but no gypsum block. As for the huge amounts of concrete that would be needed, cement was not a problem, and the sand and gravel to mix with it would be dredged from the Potomac. A decision had to be made quickly on whether the exterior of the building would be limestone or brick; whichever it was, “an immense quantity” was needed and a supply had to be locked up.

Groves took the floor. In his no-nonsense manner, he ticked off all the basic engineering and design decisions that were “needed at once.” They had to determine the exact location of the building on the site. Foundation plans showing footing depths and wall elevations were “necessary for intelligent excavation.” Structural drawings for at least the first floor were needed before reinforcing steel and form materials could be secured. Complete drawings of a typical wing were required so McShain could make sure the right material and labor were available. Plans for bringing a water line across the Potomac River and for building a sewage disposal plant had to be provided.

The list was daunting, representing fundamental design work that in normal times could be expected to take months and would certainly have been completed well before any construction began. Not as far as Somervell was concerned. With the president’s expected approval, construction would start September 1, he announced. Half a million square feet of office space would be ready for occupancy March 1, and the entire building finished six months later.

The conference broke up at 3:30
P.M.
They had their marching orders and were ready to go.

I should be kept out of heaven

Across town at the White House forty minutes later, presidential press spokesman Stephen Early escorted the press corps into the Oval Office, where the reporters gathered expectantly around the president’s desk.

It was Roosevelt’s first press conference in the White House since returning to Washington two days earlier, and he was in an effusive mood. The president reflected on his historic meeting with Churchill and his own efforts to prepare America for the Nazi threat. He none too subtly tried to evoke comparisons between himself and Abraham Lincoln, shuffling through his papers and finding an excerpt of Carl Sandburg’s biography of the sixteenth president that happened to be on his desk. He read to the reporters about Lincoln’s frustration in 1862 that “the country hadn’t yet waked up to the fact that they had a war to win.” There were obvious parallels “in this day and age,” Roosevelt said. “I think there are a lot of people who haven’t waked up to the danger,” he added. “A great many people.”

A reporter changed the subject: “Can you say anything about the new War Department building in Arlington?”

Roosevelt certainly could. “Well, that is of interest to not only the Washington papers. I think it ought to be of interest to everybody,” he said.

The president then dropped his bombshell. “My present inclination is not to accept that action by Congress,” Roosevelt announced.

Before the assembled reporters, the president again prostrated himself before the altar of L’Enfant for having brought the “temporary” buildings to the Mall. “It was a crime—I don’t hesitate to say so—it was a crime for which I should be kept out of heaven, for having desecrated the whole plan of, I think, the loveliest city in the world—the capital of the United States,” he said. Arlington Cemetery, Roosevelt continued, emotion in his voice, “is known and loved throughout the length and breadth of the land,” and its beautiful, unobstructed views treasured by thousands of visitors.

“And here it is—under the name of emergency, it is proposed to put up a permanent building, which will deliberately and definitely, for one hundred years to come, spoil the plan of the national capital,” the president said. “Quite aside from any question of access to it, or where people live, how you get across the bridge or anything else, I have had a part in spoiling the national parks and the beautiful waterfront of the District once, and I don’t want to do it again.”

The best solution, he added, would be for the War Department to stay in Washington and construct additional offices alongside the new building in Foggy Bottom, the long-planned home for the Army and Navy. But his decision was not final. “Tomorrow I am going to see General Somervell, to hear the story on the other side,” he said.

News bulletins hit the wires and all sides sprang to action. Representative Cliff Woodrum telephoned the White House and told presidential aide Pa Watson that “he and everybody on the Appropriations Committee are fearful that the President had not obtained the right information about the Army building. All of them want the new building.”

“Woodrum is merely asking the President that Somervell present the case before making the decision,” Watson reported to Roosevelt.

Gilmore Clarke read the news the next morning in the paper and immediately sent a letter to Roosevelt expressing delight. Newspaper editorialists rejoiced. “President Roosevelt has earned the thanks of Washingtonians of many future generations,”
The Washington Post
proclaimed. The
New York Times
beneficently absolved Roosevelt of his past sins. “He has accompanied confession with atonement and the Graces will not only forgive but praise him,” the paper editorialized.

The
New York Herald Tribune
was more reserved. “With candor that is all the more engaging because of its comparative rarity President Roosevelt has admitted publicly to a ‘crime’ which he perpetrated twenty-four years ago and has indicated that his hope of forgiveness at the pearly gates for this offense may prevent him from committing an even more flagrant crime today,” the paper wrote. But the
Tribune
was reserving judgment until the president followed through.

Indeed, Roosevelt had not told reporters exactly how he planned to stop the building in Arlington, given it was now authorized by Congress. The
New York Times
reported that Roosevelt was threatening to veto the entire $8 billion defense bill, but
The Washington Post
suggested that the president might ask Congress to make a change by joint resolution. The truth was Roosevelt had not figured out a solution but was confident something would be worked out. Harold Smith, his budget director, had called in a top aide from vacation and was busy studying options, including, at Roosevelt’s suggestion, the possibility of simply impounding the $35 million allocated for the building.

Somervell scrambled to salvage the situation. He enlisted the assistance of John J. McCloy, the energetic assistant secretary of war so wise to the ways of Washington. Stimson once said he “sometimes wondered whether anyone in the administration ever acted without ‘having a word with McCloy.’” He was the man to whom everyone in the War Department took their problems, and this certainly qualified. “You’ve got to take this on, Jack,” Somervell told McCloy. “This is getting a little…complicated.”

Somervell and McCloy reported to the White House on August 20, the morning after the president’s press conference. Roosevelt directed them to go back to the drawing board. “The President was unwilling to approve the building as located by us,” Somervell reported in a memo after the meeting. But to his relief, Roosevelt retreated from keeping the War Department in Washington. The president said he would support placing the building in Arlington on or near the quartermaster depot site, three-quarters of a mile south of Arlington Farm. Still, Somervell and McCloy put up a fight for Arlington Farm, arguing that a building at the quartermaster site would cost more money because of the poor foundation conditions. Roosevelt assured them he would approve the additional money needed within a year.

Donning his architectural mantle, Roosevelt peppered Somervell with questions about the design of the building. “The President evinced considerable interest in the materials to be used in the façade and other details of the work, asking that Mr. Bergstrom and I present these to him from time to time as the new plans mature,” Somervell reported.

Finally, Roosevelt was skeptical that the building needed to be as large as the War Department planned; when Somervell insisted the space was needed, the president indicated he would withhold a final decision until seeing the plans. “Put three shifts on the study and report back as soon as the work is done,” Roosevelt directed.

Emerging from the conference, McCloy told reporters that the president had given them “some new ideas.” Somervell, irritated, snapped at the reporters’ queries. “Why ask me?” he said. “I’m only a bricklayer.”

Somervell and McCloy drove across the river to Arlington, where the general gloomily looked over the quartermaster depot site. More than three hundred construction workers were on the job and were preparing to lay the foundation for the depot. Late the following day, August 21, the War Department ordered all work at the site to stop. Worried that it would be seen as a sign he was acquiescing, Somervell ordered that no statement be made to the press. But the newspapers quickly learned of it and reported the news as a signal the Army would build its new headquarters at the depot site. They also reported War Department representatives had approached owners of nearby properties to ascertain sale prices.

“We are proceeding with the work,” Somervell reported in a memo delivered by special messenger to Stimson, who was traveling on the West Coast. “About one month will be lost because of change in plans, but the estimated time of completion after we are able to begin work, namely, one year, remains the same.”

Somervell waved off the president’s skepticism about the size of the building, writing Stimson that Roosevelt “did approve the construction of a building of the same size as originally proposed.”

That was news to McCloy; he had heard the president say no such thing. “I did not gather that he gave final approval of the size of the building but told you to work out the plans for the new site and bring them back to him for final approval,” McCloy wrote to Somervell, trying to correct the record.

Returning to Washington on Monday, August 25, after a long weekend in Hyde Park, Roosevelt moved to wrap up the controversy. He signed the $8 billion defense spending bill after receiving assurances from Harold Smith that the language in it was flexible enough to allow leeway in locating the new War Department building. The White House released a cryptic statement saying the president did not consider the provisions in the bill relating to the building to be “mandatory.”

The following afternoon, when reporters were brought into the Oval Office for a press conference, Roosevelt explained himself. “Start taking this down, Earl,” he directed the veteran White House correspondent for the National Broadcasting Corp., Earl Godwin.

The “best solution,” Roosevelt announced, would be to put the bulk of the building on the quartermaster site, with a small portion—jutting onto the adjacent Arlington Farm land.

The bill passed by Congress did not specify where on the Arlington Farm site the new building was to be placed. As long as any part of the project was on the Arlington Farm land, the president reasoned, it would technically adhere to the act of Congress. “So that makes it entirely within the bill,” the president declared. It was the sort of creative—actually, far-fetched—solution Roosevelt loved.

As for the size, Roosevelt said traffic congestion made a building of 4 million square feet infeasible, and that the building should therefore be no larger than 2.25 million square feet.

Furthermore, Roosevelt said, the new building in Arlington would not be the War Department’s permanent headquarters. Ultimately, the department would return to Foggy Bottom in Washington. “Now, my thought is that this new War Department building [in Arlington] would be built on extremely simple lines, and that when this emergency is over, and the War Department…reverts to a peacetime status, they will be able to come back here to their regular place,” he said.

And when that happened, the temporary buildings that resulted from his transgression a quarter-century earlier would no longer be needed. “I hope before I die to be able to tear down the two excrescences down in Potomac Park, the present Navy Building and the present Munitions Building,” he said.